November 2014

Every month, we’ll be bringing you no more than a handful of slightly longer — but always worthy of your time and attention — reads about the wonderful world of Apple. Bring your own Instapaper account, because this is Good Reads.

A lot has been said about the famed Reality Distortion Field of Steve Jobs, and how the late Apple CEO manipulated perception when he was on stage. A rare look from one German journalist from Medium tells us what it’s really like, and as it turns out, it’s less smoke and mirrors, and more about a carefully controlled media presence. It’s overly critical of Apple in some places, in my opinion, but it still makes the cut this month.

Three years after the death of its charismatic founder, Apple is doing all it can to maintain this reality distortion field, mainly by exercising total control about anything that is reported about the company or its products. In contrast to Apple’s design philosophy this strategy does not manifest itself through clarity and elegance, but through a subtle and sometimes questionable toying with our, the reporting journalists’ vanities and dependencies.

Apple teased out a little more information about the Apple Watch yesterday, updating the website with new details about how the Apple Watch works as a watch, among other things. Apple says you’ll be able to use custom watchfaces with the Apple Watch, and the page on connecting with friends says you can reach other Apple Watch users. Last but not least, the section on health and fitness lets us know about the activity tracking features of the device. Interestingly enough, the new Apple Watch pages don’t seem to be on the Apple Australia website, but I still doubt Apple will launch the Apple Watch in the US only.

Just when you thought Apple won’t be using sapphire displays in their products anytime soon, thanks to the demise of GT Advanced, a rumour suggests Foxconn will be stepping up to the sapphire plate to produce sapphire displays for Apple’s next iPhone. It all stems from news Foxconn has reached an agreement to set up a new factory just outside an existing iPhone 6 assembly plant, which should aid in their efforts to supply Apple with both sapphire and displays.

Apple’s market cap hit $700 billion yesterday, which is almost more money than anyone can possibly imagine. Seriously, it’s a lot — and as MacRumors notes, it means Apple’s market cap has doubled since Tim Cook was named CEO in 2011. Despite issues with iCloud. Despite software quality taking a recent decline. In spite of everything that’s happened, Apple is now worth more than it was ever before, and if that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does.

As part of Apple’s continuing contributions to AIDS research, the company has kicked off a global campaign encompassing both Apple Retail, Online, and even the App Store. From now until December 7, purchases of apps or in-app purchases part of the Apps for (RED) campaign will contribute to the Global Fund to fight AIDS. On December 1st, World AIDS Day, Apple will be donating a portion of all sales at its Retail and Online stores towards the Global Fund. There’s a press release on Apple’s website.

IWork for iCloud was updated over the weekend, bringing eight new languages and a bunch of other features. Document renaming from within the editor and Arabic and Hebrew support for Pages are among the highlights there, but iWork wasn’t the only part of iCloud to be updated. Photos in iCloud now lets you upload images and video captured from non-Apple devices, which is then synced to a user’s devices over the internet.

Foxconn are planning to invest $2.6 billion into a display factory exclusively designed to supply Apple. The report comes from Bloomberg, who says Apple themselves requested the plant for “urgent capacity”, likely because displays are the one thing Apple can’t manufacture quickly enough to meet iPhone demand. The plant is expected to begin production of displays for Apple by the end of 2015.

In the App Store, “Free” is now “Get”, thanks to a plethora of free apps offering in-app purchases. The recent change to the App Store doesn’t differentiate between free apps that offer in-app purchases and those that don’t, instead preferring to label all free apps with Get. It’s a minor language change in the grand scheme of things, but may turn out to be fairly important when it comes to people downloading apps for “free”.

A rare bit of Australian-related Apple news, this morning, as Path Talk launches in Australia alongside the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand. Just when you thought the social network by a guy with popped collars and day and night phones was all but dead, Path Talk revives the name by providing businesses with a way to communicate with each other. For those unsure about what it all means, you can ask questions via text to local businesses in your area and get personalised responses back — no calling to wait on hold, no need to figure out if they have a social media presence on Twitter or Facebook. It’s kinda cool.

Apple has released the WatchKit SDK for developers to start diving into the world of Apple Watch apps, even though we’re still not sure how much Apple Watch units will actually cost (or when they’ll be released, for that matter). Even so, even the most expensive watches in the world will need apps created for them, and you can bet that people will be willing to pay good money for quality apps, right? Actually, scratch that.